Song Writing

Well I am having to write a song and I have no idea where to start or what it should be about... I was wondering if you had any ideas on what my song should be about and if you have any tips for composing a song? I have composed purely instrumental pieces before and done arranging of pieces but have never writen a song (containing lyrics) PLEASE help me

You could try the old method of chopping together a few headlines or writing one line and seeing where it takes you from there. Some of the lyrics can be quite surreal and not always make sense but sounds good.

Ruth, if you feel strongly about something, you almost certainly have a song ready to come out. If you don't feel strongly about anything, you may be able to compose something clever, but it probably won't resonate with many others (not that that is the test of whether your song is good). I can't help you beyond this point. I have written stuff (if you can call it that) that emerged pretty much finished and I have struggled to express an idea that just isn't ready.

Ruth, if you feel strongly about something, you almost certainly have a song ready to come out. If you don't feel strongly about anything, you may be able to compose something clever, but it probably won't resonate with many others (not that that is the test of whether your song is good). I can't help you beyond this point. I have written stuff (if you can call it that) that emerged pretty much finished and I have struggled to express an idea that just isn't ready.

I'll agree with turbo-1 on that. ... it's gotta be something you really feel for to make the song powerful... there are no ABC's to song-writing. You read some Nirvana or Radiohead lyrics and they barely make any sense at all... yet somehow (together with the music) they bring out something that people really relate to.

Maybe you could play with some melodies and see how they make you feel. Find one that makes you feel poigniant about an experience you had and then examine why it made you feel that way. When you have some descriptive thoughts work them into the melody recreated the memory. Then fine tune the whole thing over and over until you can't think of anything else. Then keep it on the back burner for a couple of days and kind of mull over it occassionally. Maybe something will occur to you that you just have to add.

This kind of feedback cycle works well for me when I need to be creative. I think this method would be helpful in creating a relationship between the music and the lyrics. Weaving seems much more appealing to me than stiching.

Ruth, did you get that song written? I once had to compose and perform a song for a music theory class. I took about 20 minutes to compose a neat little finger-picking instrumental on my old Gibson 12-string, then it took me all one Sunday afternoon to transcribe it (I can't read standard musical notation for guitar, though I played semi-professionally for years and can improvise freely). The instructor looked at my transcription, made me play the piece in front of the class, then asked if anybody else in the class played guitar. A guy that I really respected as a performing guitarist said that he did, and the instructor handed him my transcription and made me play the piece again and asked if he thought the transcription was accurate. He said yes (though he hadn't a clue because the piece was very lively with lots of fingerpicking, hammer-ons and pull-offs!) and the instructor gave me an A. After class, the other guitarist asked how I came up with ideas like that and we became friends and collaborated and even visited one another after college. He was the lead guitarist in a regionally-hot group and our paths crossed periodically - it was neat when about 30 years down the road he showed up at a blues/rock open-mike jam that I was hosting weekly. After all that time, his first words were not "Hey! How're you doing?", but "Wow!, you've got that vibrato down good!" Guitarists!

I've written songs based on nothing more than a title idea or an overheard phrase, or even a new spin on a cliche. For instance, I heard someone say on the news that there was a "rock slide." I thought the title "Rock Slide" would make a good rock song. So I wrote it. My wife calls a moon partly hidden by clouds a Cinderella Moon. I thought that idea would make a nice romantic somewhat jazzy song. So I wrote it.

My process is to think about the phrase, and what it means. The first line to Cinderella Moon describes immeditately what it is, since it is a phrase unfamiliar to most people.